


He Speaks in Petals

by calrissian18



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Smash, College Student Stiles Stilinski, Full Shift Werewolves, Future Fic, M/M, Monster of the Week - Dryads, Pining, Pining Derek, Pop Culture References Out the Yang, Smoking Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22213312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: “You think what you once were is what you always are.  Growth is not only for trees, little Hale.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 73
Kudos: 780
Collections: Full Moon Ficlet Prompt #362: Inflate





	He Speaks in Petals

**Author's Note:**

> i am _nOT_ slacking as hard as i did last year, okay kiddos? i am making with the STUFF. see [gestures below] S T U F F. decided to start off small and around what is essentially my home base in this fandom with a fullmoon_ficlet prompt as my first poke-y prodder of 2020, and i think i did pretty well considering not one single solitary iota of this was in my original plan and it (hopefully) looks totally intentional. thanks to emeraldawn for the alpha read and thegeminiqueen for the beta read, you goobers are grotesquely wonderful and i adore you.
> 
> written for the fullmoon_ficlet prompt: inflate.
> 
> p.s. thank you so, sooo much for all the kind words left for me on the _only_ fic i did manage to get up in 2019. it's definitely a _huge_ reason why i'm determined to make 2020 a more fic-focused year. <3

Light falls in soft swathes through the grimy, open windows of Derek’s loft, the scent of cold air mingling with stale coffee. There’s a quietness, a comfortable sort of lethargy to the room that Derek never would’ve thought possible considering the people in it.

Stiles stretches, shifting on the sill, the bare balcony behind him, a yawn overtaking his bored expression. His forearm is resting, pale side up, in the center of an open tome on Greek history. It sits precariously on his slack thigh, his knee at a soft, open angle and the toe of his shoe hooked around his ankle. “Look, if Mother Nature’s all out of fucks to give and has decided to get this mass extinction ball rolling one planet-killing douchebag at a time, how do we not accept that’s perfectly within her rights and call it a day? I mean, I’m, personally,” he flutters long fingers towards his own chest, “on the side of the murder-trees. I’m gonna make t-shirts declaring my allegiance as soon as I get home, and maybe an informative podcast or six.”

His shoulders are rounded, not indicative of defeat but rather bad posture, and he’s looking at Derek with a shrug in his expression if not his body language.

Derek has to squint back at him, the dying sunlight strong against Stiles’ shoulders and buzzed hair. He pretends that’s the only reason it’s hard to look at him. He’s not wearing an overshirt and his long sleeves are pushed up his forearms, revealing freckled skin, the cotton clinging to his biceps and chest, emphasizing the muscular frame beneath. 

Derek consciously raises his eye line again, focusing on Stiles’ challenging gaze.

When he doesn’t reply, Stiles’ head swings around to Scott, who’s standing, leaning against the back of Derek’s couch. “We hook them up with Sam Waterston, get him to make an impassioned speech appealing to our collective better natures, and that’s been scientifically proven to lead to jury nullification at the _very least_ , am I right? So why bother, honestly?”

Scott grins. “He’s ‘for the people,’ though, Stiles.”

Stiles makes a ‘pshaw’ sound. “Nyet, brosiv, nyet. He _was_ for the people, then was forced to spend over half a century with them, said, ‘fuck these guys,’ got arrested at a climate change protest, and changed his political affiliation to ‘Pro Death Fauna.’ As one does.”

Derek’s not sure if the monologue is over yet and decides he doesn’t care one way or another, bringing them back around to the topic at hand. “How sure are we it’s a dryad?”

Stiles raises his hand, nearly dislodging the book, and barely manages to smack his palm into it in time to keep it from falling. “I’m still voting Ent.” Derek stares at him, unimpressed, and Stiles relents. Moodily. “Maybe seventy percent? As reasonably sure as we can be using inherently biased research methods.” He half-lifts the book off his leg. “We can all agree that what we saw was not humanoid, right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, assuming the affirmative he would’ve gotten if he did. “Unfortunately for us, humans? Tend to believe they’re at the center of the universe, the well sprung from rather than one of a gajillion organisms doing the springing—I mean go to _one_ frat party and tell me I’m wrong—and that means pareidolia is a thing. 

“We see… us rather than reality. A week ago, a tree with some serious animus, in every definition of the word, uprooted itself and _demolished_ a dude and his Hummer. Now get a Greek broh from the eleventh century to tell you the same story and it’s a naked chick with leaves in her hair who came out of the heart of a tree trunk and turned some guy into another tree by macking on his face for a bit. Are those the same things, just one guy hasn’t gotten laid in a while and isn’t too bothered with historical accuracy? Hard to say.” He wobbles his hand back and forth. “I’d put it at about seventy percent.”

Derek breathes out sharply. “How do we kill it?”

He looks to Scott first, who shrugs. Predictably. He still doesn’t have the stomach for this part.

Stiles scoffs. “What part of ‘Yay Murder-Trees’ did you miss? This is totally going in my podcast.” He holds out a hand as though gripping an invisible baseball in the air. “The sheer inflated ego, my man.”

“ _Stiles_.”

He toes at his long-gone-cold coffee. “Listen, I’m sure Deaton’ll have something for you. Guy’s never seemed super discriminating.” He sets the book in his lap aside, looks forlornly down at his undrinkable coffee, and chews on the corner of his lip. Derek doesn’t watch him do it. Mostly. “If this pow-wow’s become a wow-wop then I’ve got a sheriff to meet.”

Scott half-laughs. “Dude, _what_?”

Stiles grins, pleased with himself. “You know, it’s like flipping the sign to closed, reverse it. Wow-wop.”

Scott full laughs while Derek rolls his eyes. Scott doesn’t linger, having places to be as well, and he offers Derek a respectful nod, pulls his phone from his pocket and, undoubtedly, shoots off a text to Allison before slipping out the door.

Stiles stands, shoves thumbs into the small of his back, stretching his torso, then artfully climbs out the window. (Derek uses the _door_.) He already has his cigarette lit and is scrunching his eyes against the sinking sun when Derek meets him on the balcony. “You did good, Wolf Man.”

Derek perks an eyebrow at him.

Stiles turns to look at him more fully, leaning up against the edge of the stone wall, one arm propped up on the ledge and the other pulling the cigarette from his lips. Smoke wreathes his next words. “I told you to call if any murder, mayhem, or meerkats happened—I still want to see one of those fur aliens in real life—and you did. Color me surprised, and impressed.” He even looks it. “You actually learned your lesson after the whole lavellan thing. There’s an ‘old dog, new tricks’ joke there ripe for the picking but I’m not going to do it because I respect you.” He smiles widely. “And I’m too good for it, but mostly the former.”

Derek doesn’t want to think about the _lavellan thing_ —the reason he _knows_ Stiles’ shirt clings to dips and swells of definition he never would’ve guessed at otherwise. He’s not going to think about Stiles furious and covered in toxic gunk, tearing out of his clothes before the poison could reach his skin. He’s not going to think about him standing up to his calves in a slow-moving river, his surprisingly broad chest heaving, dressed in his corduroys and anger and proceeding to chew Derek out for not telling them about this earlier, for thinking he could handle it on his own, all while Derek silently agreed that, yes, he was in well over his head.

“You have too many checks and balances in this town,” Derek grumbles, knowing either the sheriff or Scott would’ve alerted him before long. He might as well get the credit.

“True, that,” Stiles chirps back, dragging in a lungful of smoke, only willing to ingest poison if he’s the one doing the poisoning.

The smoking isn’t new anymore. It had come back with him that first summer home from Berkeley, and while he still tried to shield his dad from it, he was unapologetic about it otherwise. He’d called it a ‘professional necessity,’ saying drolly, ‘You know why journalists smoke? Because their future sources might.’

Derek thinks he just likes being in control of the harm coming to him for a change. Either way, Derek mostly dismisses it now, doesn’t quite condone it but certainly doesn’t condemn it. It mars Stiles’ clean and kinetic natural scent, blackens his insides, but it looks good on him, too. He breathes in calm with the smoke, breathes out his propensity for second-guessing when he lets it go.

“You’re really not going to do anything,” Derek says, incredulous.

Stiles considers it, ashing his cigarette, sure fingers making a practiced motion. “I’m not convinced the bad guy wasn’t the one that got got. For all we know, he was part-Orc.” He shrugs, unable to hide his slight smirk over his own joke. “If a ‘Dead Guy #2’ gets cast in this here melodrama then I’ll reconsider my stance, Pokémon trainer’s honor.”

Derek grunts.

Stiles flicks the butt of his cigarette over the edge of the balcony and straightens up, a kick of his heel levering him upright. He’s more settled in his skin now, less prone to flailing overextensions of his body and more sleekly leaning into his every movement.

He doesn’t seem to realize how much harder that makes it for Derek to breathe around him.

“Seriously though, Deaton. He’ll know something and, who knows, maybe this is the sixth Sunday with Mercury in retrograde past the anniversary of the fourth full eclipse in the Georgian calendar that he actually shares that something.” He shrugs, not seeming the least bit out of breath, and claps Derek on the shoulder reassuringly.

For at least the fourth time this visit, Derek appreciates the fact that Stiles isn’t a werewolf and couldn’t possibly hear the way his heartbeat stuttered at just the touch of his palm.

He watches Stiles leave and stands on the balcony long after the sound of the Jeep’s engine has faded. He paces through his apartment, only stopping to pick up the coffee Stiles had let grow cold. He presses his thumb into the lip of it, absently rubbing back and forth over where Stiles’ mouth had been only hours earlier.

* * *

Deaton does know. Fire and magic harnessed through herbs and words and intention. Derek leaves it all behind when he goes to find the probable-dryad, a week after Stiles has left town again, winter break being over. It’s easier to breathe but colder in a way that has nothing to do with the weather. A combination of Deaton being his usual glacially helpful self, and Stiles’ disinterest in anything to do with bringing a likely-justified tree to heel means Derek’s been slow to act.

But not dissuaded from it.

He strides through tall grass and wet ground out to the open space where they’d first seen a tree uproot itself and mete out justice, or vengeance, or whatever was behind it deciding to find sentience and do death.

The tree is easier to find in the half-light and Derek walks a careful circle around it, seeing the wounds in the bark for the first time. A deeper, open gash mars its side and the scent of sap and violence is thick in Derek’s nostrils. He frowns, reaching out a hand towards it.

“I thought you would return, Alpha,” says a voice that… isn’t a voice. If pareidolia is seeing faces in random stimuli then this is hearing a voice in the scrape of sticks or the flutter of leaves, genderless and wild. “Have you brought my destruction with you, then?”

“No,” Derek answers truthfully because, after six years, he’s learned not to bet against Stiles. Thank crap for that. “I came to inquire, not sentence.”

There’s a hum or a sigh, Derek can’t translate it properly because it’s not language, not really. Not as he understands it. “You no longer speak in petals.” If Derek didn’t know better, he might call the tone chiding.

He also has no idea what that means and before he can ask, a giant root pulls itself from the earth, dirt falling in clumps, worms and beetles shaking free, bending and curling itself before him. It’s just as awesome as it was that first night, and freezes Derek the same as it did then. The tip touches low on his stomach. “Flowers bloomed here,” the root lifts and hovers in front of his mouth, “and fell freely from here.” The root lowers to the earth slowly, stiffly. “But no longer. Nothing grows in you now.”

Derek is still trying to decide if the tree believes that to be a good or bad thing when it creaks in words again.

“You have come to inquire?”

Derek shakes his head. “I see the injury now, the cause.”

There’s a simmer behind the sentiment when the tree answers, “He crushed his metal into me. I take more than nutrients from the Giver, and you bury your dead in her. You’ve done so since men walked across her back. I know your language, your history, your hearts. I understand _mistake._ ” The tree bristles, a full-bodied movement that shakes leaves from its branches and bark from its sides. “He crashed into me with force and weight but not intention. Then he took his axe and struck me, and it was no mistake.” A root lifts by Derek’s foot, the ground shifting, the gathered leaves tumbling and the handle of the axe lands with a heavy thunk across the toe of his boot.

Derek lifts it, sap glistening on the blade, and knows he’s meant to take it with him, this damaging thing away from the damage it’s caused.

“Tell me then, am I to be condemned?”

There’s a challenge behind the notion and Derek thinks he knows what it is. “Isn’t that my question to you? We’re transitory animals scurrying through your home, can you continue to be patient with us or have we finally overstayed our welcome?”

A shower of leaves falls onto Derek’s head and shoulders and the tree offers in a stronger voice than any Derek has heard yet, “You are a good Alpha, little Hale.”

Derek stiffens. He isn’t. He’d tell the tree to ask Erica or Boyd about that but it can’t, they’re dead.

The tree seems to know what’s caused the sudden rigidity of his muscles, at least in a general sense. “You think what you once were is what you always are. Growth is not only for trees, little Hale.”

* * *

Derek walks back to his loft through the Preserve and the trees seem to lean in as he passes under them, stars pinwheeling overhead. The forest smells lush and stands stoic and Derek concentrates on the thrum of his own pulse, finds the quarter moon with his heartbeat rather than his gaze and sinks into the pool of instinct and power waiting just beneath the surface.

He grins with fangs and snout and races through the trunks so quickly it’s as if his paws don’t touch the ground. He feels the pressure of eyes following him as he runs, but with curiosity rather than ill-intent.

He puts on a good show for them.

An hour’s been lost to the wild by the time he’s loping up the stairs to his loft. He pauses outside the door, dragging out his phone. Texts Stiles, because it’s the only thing he can do, feeling as _alive_ as he does right now: _Dryad business, when you can._

He thinks for a moment, then adds: _Wear your shirt._

He doesn’t expect a response, not at a little after two in the morning, but he gets one before he can get the key in his door. _Should be doable this weekend. Will let you know if anything comes up_ An emoji thumbs up punctuates the last sentence.

He hasn’t walked inside yet when Stiles follows up with: _I DO have a shirt, y’know_

* * *

Stiles shows up in a maroon cardigan, cream stripes ringing the sleeves at his wrists; it’s something that would look more at home on an Ivy League campus, if not for the fact that it was made of rayon. It’s unbuttoned and open over a distressed t-shirt that says ‘Death Petal’ on the front and shows a band consisting of trees and flowers playing instruments made from human bones.

Stiles’ grin is beyond proud. “I bribed a Graphic Design major. Kick-ass, no?”

Derek doesn’t want to admit it kind of is. He grabs his keys off the side table and points out the door. “Let’s go.” It’s just the two of them, the way it rarely is, and Derek’s gut clenches as if he’s unaware of it, as if it needs to be a constant reminder.

Stiles dutifully follows him down to the Camaro and Derek’s half-afraid he’ll pull out his phone and get lost in texting Scott or, worse, someone in Stiles’ life Derek doesn’t have so much as a reference point for.

Of course, there’s one surefire way to assure that doesn’t happen. And Derek’s going to do it.

He flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. “Still set on Journalism?” It’s not the world’s best conversation starter but it is something thrown out for no other purpose than to _start a conversation_. 

_Growth_. Right?

Stiles twitches, surprised at being addressed, and Derek does everything he can not to visibly react to that. Stiles doesn’t let the stutter show in his response. “I mean I have now seen how sparsely attended Journalism Ethics is so my spirits are the slightest bit dampened.”

“Can’t say you didn’t expect it,” Derek offers, like being right is enough of a silver lining there.

“Expect? Yes. Have hope that maybe humanity isn’t as much of a garbage fire as it currently seems? I can’t seem to extinguish it,” Stiles says with a sigh.

“How very Scott McCall of you.”

Stiles’ mouth tilts up in a half-smile and he says, “I got him to watch Star Wars, he got me to believe in the good in people. Hardly seems like a fair trade.”

“If you got him to watch the prequels it is.”

Stiles laughs, loud and genuine, and Derek feels it down in his toes as he puts the car in park. He steps out and Stiles drags a half-crushed pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and hangs back as he lights it. He takes a quick, hard drag then jogs up to Derek’s side.

“How goes the co-Alpha-ing?” he asks, so much more natural with the flow of a conversation than Derek is. He rubs at his lower lip with his thumbnail. “You and Scott no longer seem two seconds away from stepping into the Thunderdome. What’s Tina Turner gonna sing about now?”

“Secondhand emotions,” Derek deadpans.

Stiles’ burst of laughter is unrestrained and that squirm in Derek’s stomach is back. He bumps Derek’s hip on purpose and sings, off-key, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it, who needs a heart when a heart can be broooken?”

Derek can barely speak through the tension— _good_ tension—in his throat. “I regret opening this door.”

“You can pretend you don’t want to jump in on that bridge, but I think we both know it’s a lie.” 

Derek is spared a rejoinder when the wind rushes through branches to say the words, “You’ve returned, Alpha.”

Stiles startles so badly he nearly loses his balance. He _does_ drop his cigarette, which smolders and dies in a matter of seconds. He stares up at the tree neither one of them realized they were so close to. “Holy crap! Talking tree!” He blinks. A lot. Gasps out, “We are not Orcs.”

Derek rolls his eyes indulgently, and makes himself say it. “You were right, about there being a why.”

Stiles doesn’t look at him, eyes flying over the tree’s trunk, not in the least bit surprised. “Of course there was a why.” His hand narrates with a lackadaisical sort of air. “Trees, nature in general, pretty universally considered benevolent. That doesn’t happen if you’re hauling off and wrecking people with any regularity.” He pauses for a moment, glances over, and realizes. “You pardoned the tree. You’re the Lorax. Or, well, maybe more accurately his generic cousin, Lomex.” His eyes are bright, wondering. “You listened.” He sounds… Derek can’t identify it. Because Stiles has never sounded that way with him before.

He doesn’t address it, shrugs against the renewed tightness in his stomach. “More like the tree pardoned us.”

Stiles squints up into the canopy, then sees the damage to its trunk and frowns. “Not entirely sure we’ve earned that.” He lays his hand over the gash and says, “Maybe we could get someone to heal it?”

There’s a lightness to the creaking voice as it answers, “Someone is healing it.” Stiles’s chin retracts into his neck and he looks up, curious. “Time.”

The roots of the tree rustle beneath the dirt, almost like a shiver has moved through them. “The petals fall from your mouth once more, little Alpha. This is just as well; they soften you.”

Derek’s footing falters as the roots move but it’s his distraction at the tree’s words that truly causes him to lose his balance.

Stiles’ hand finds his forearm, steadying him, thumb on one side, fingers curled around the other. His skin is warm against Derek’s, and welcome. “All good, big guy?”

It’s not tension. Not butterflies. Not bats. Not fluttering of any kind.

Flowers.

It’s flowers blooming inside him when he’s near Stiles, spilling out his mouth because he can’t contain what Stiles does to him. He never could.

Derek looks back at him, the scrunch of concern starting to pinch around his eyes, the chapped lower lip, the long lashes, and Derek has his full attention. That’s something, isn’t it? “Yes.” His voice is a hoarse croak but Derek has no doubt it’s still flowering.

Stiles pulls his hand away and Derek feels like he takes something with him when he does, tears something out, and the growing thing in his gut is rioting. But, for the first time, Derek thinks he can get it back.

 _Deserves_ it back.

Stiles tilts his head back, staring up into the branches, plops himself down and arranges himself cross-legged, tossing his palms behind him to catch his weight. Settling in for the night. “Do you have a name? Or is there no ‘individual’ and more a ‘collective?’ Is it like mycelium that way? I mean, root systems are _intense_ so I could definitely believe the latter. But then, would your roots have to be touching to share information or is touch not really as important a sense to trees as it is to humans?”

A chittering sound comes from high in the tree’s branches. It’s indecipherable as speech and eventually Derek realizes that’s because it’s most likely laughter.

He sinks down next to Stiles, curious despite himself, knowing that’s not even close to all the questions that are about to rocket out of his mouth so he might as well get comfortable. 

A long stretch has passed since they sat down before Derek finally allows himself to lower his knee in the space between them, knowing there’s not space _enough_ that it won’t brush against Stiles’. He doesn’t move it, lets it rest there, and he could choke on all the flowers that fill his mouth.

* * *

Stiles is still riding an adrenaline high when they enter Derek’s loft, sweeping hand gestures and racing heartbeat dogging every word. “We met a _tree,_ Derek. A _living_ tree. And it spoke to us, in English.” He frowns thoughtfully. “Well, it mimicked English, or human speech, though it clearly understood it.” He adds in a not-quite-under-his-breath murmur, “Sadly, better than most the people I know. It certainly had you beat on words-per-minute.”

The pseudo-insult doesn’t so much as glance against Derek, he’s too taken in by Stiles in this moment, too curious as to how the joy would taste on his skin.

Stiles absently throws his cardigan onto the back of Derek’s couch, and Derek stares at it. He’s leaving a piece of himself in Derek’s space, freely, openly, and Derek _wants_.

Stiles looks up suddenly, disbelief and glee in him in equal amounts. “Sometimes I’m just… in awe of what my life is,” he almost laughs, “do you ever get that?” _Yes_ , Derek thinks, _right now_. “I mean, I was a kid who spent his weekends playing World of Warcraft, warmed a bench as my extracurricular activity, pined after the most popular girl in school at the height of my clichédom, and had absolutely no high school social status to speak of, and _I_ get to know how much bigger the world is. It’s mind-boggling. It’s boggle of the mind.”

The giddiness is starting to wear away and Stiles’ eyes shift to the side, half-embarrassed. He quips to lighten the moment, “And you totally want a shirt now, don’t you?”

He doesn’t mean to say it but there’s also no way he could not. “I want _you_.”

Stiles’ breath stutters in his throat and he swallows. Says weakly, “What?”

Derek takes a step closer, and another when that doesn’t make Stiles bolt. He touches Stiles’ throat, feels the shallow breaths as they travel through it, raises his palm to Stiles’ jaw, his thumb to his lower lip. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Stiles tries to laugh but it’s just breath that breaks free, warming Derek’s thumb. “Remember what I was saying, about being in awe? Applying that here too.”

Derek lets himself smile, lets himself believe he gets to have this. “So am I,” he whispers as he leans in to claim Stiles’ mouth. And that is the right word: _claim_. He’s claiming this happiness, this man, this future.

And Stiles lets him. _Claims_ back just as hard. His hands in Derek’s hair, his tongue in Derek’s mouth, his thighs around Derek’s waist. 

Derek smooths his hands up from Stiles’ knees to his ass cheeks, lifts him higher, and feeds petals—endless petals—into Stiles’ mouth and says against his cheek, his ear, his neck, “I want, want, _want_ you.”

Stiles gasps it back.

Derek leads him to his bed, spreads his thighs, and lowers Stiles onto his mattress. Another choice he’s making, letting Stiles’ scent sink into the threads, letting this space become a shrine to this memory because he’s choosing to believe this won’t be the only one he gets. It’s easier than he expects it to be.

Because he trusts Stiles. He has for years.

Stiles’ fingers tug at his hair as Derek makes quick work of the button and zip on his jeans. Stiles is hard and that’s, Derek fights down a shiver, that’s _good_ in a way he didn’t know the word ‘good’ could contain.

Stiles belongs in his mouth, in his bed, and the _scent_ of him is nearly enough to make Derek lose it and if he had much of a gag reflex he thinks it wouldn’t have shown up this time, just let him have at it, knowing better than to interrupt this kind of moment.

Stiles digs his heels into the mattress and chants, “Derek, Derek, _Derek_ ,” and they can both barely form words. Derek shoves a hand down his pants and comes in seconds flat and Stiles says, “ _fuck_ ,” and tastes so damn perfect that it makes Derek’s entire body twitch in one long aftershock.

When he can breathe again, Derek lays his cheek flat against Stiles’ still-clad thigh and says, “Stay.”

He looks up to see Stiles perk an eyebrow at him, cheeks ruddy and glistening and glorious. He says back, almost defiant, “Try to get rid of me.”

* * *

Derek wakes to strong sunlight, cool sheets, and Stiles. His body is warm and lax with sleep. His face is untroubled and Derek strokes his thumb down that soft lower lip and says, “Morning.” Stiles doesn’t rouse even slightly and Derek decides to go into town for that overpriced cappuccino Stiles couldn’t stop talking about when he’d come home a year ago.

He sees it next door after he leaves the café, asks the woman at the counter about its care, and takes it home.

Stiles is just sitting up in bed, sheet pooling at his waist. He’d shucked off his shirt and jeans sometime during the night and Derek knows that nakedness is a promise.

He means to take Stiles up on it.

Stiles frowns, amused, watching Derek maneuver it in. “You’d better be able to keep that thing alive, I know someone who would take it hella personally if you didn’t.”

Derek looks at the small tree, a dwarf lemon that had practically called his name, and says truthfully, “I’m getting good at it actually, growing things.”

**Author's Note:**

> i have a [tumblr](https://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/), because the interwebs has not yet come up with a good enough alternative hellsite.


End file.
